If you’re a blogger, joining Facebook groups can be really beneficial; they’re great for getting good blogging advice, finding blogging updates, and connecting with other bloggers.

LIST OF FACEBOOK GROUPS FOR BLOGGERS

Below are my favourite blogging groups for bloggers.

I’ve only recommended ones that I’m a part of personally, and find to be beneficial to growing my blog and getting blogging advice

1. 1. Blogging Like We Mean It
   2. Blogging for New Bloggers with Lucrezia and Marina
   3. The Smart Blogging Approach

WHY ARE FACEBOOK GROUPS FOR BLOGGERS HELPFUL?

Facebook groups are great if you’re a blogger for a few reasons:

1. To grow your blog. These Facebook groups for bloggers are a chance to promote your blog. Promo threads, answering questions from other bloggers, re-pin threads; these are all the perfect chance to start getting real engaged traffic to your blog.
2. To network with other bloggers. There can be thousands of people in these Facebook groups, looking to work with other bloggers, have their questions answered, and just to meet other bloggers. It’s one of the best ways to get talking to bloggers like yourself!
3. For support. Not only for other bloggers, but yourself. Often in these Facebook groups for bloggers, people ask questions they need real bloggers to answer. And sometimes, you’ll be stuck on something to do with your blog. Chances are someone in a Facebook group knows the answer and it’s just a comment away.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD FACEBOOK GROUP?

When you join a Facebook group for bloggers, you want to make sure you’re getting the most out them. They can be a waste of time, but good ones will make sure you are getting what you need.

A good Facebook group for a blogger should:

• Have good engagement. There’s no point being in a Facebook group if somebody is posting and then there’s crickets.
• Have rules. These might seem unnecessary, but it helps stop the group becoming too sales-y with everyone promoting their own stuff.
• Are well monitored. What’s the point in having rules if nobody sticks to them? A good Facebook group will have admin(s) that are focused on the group. They make sure nobody starts trying to sell stuff, and look for inappropriate comments.
• Have a weekly schedule. This isn’t needed, but if the group has a weekly schedule, you know the admin is invested in the group. Groups that have a schedule also tend to have better engagement and opportunities to get more blog traffic.

HOW MANY BLOGGING FACEBOOK GROUPS SHOULD I JOIN?

Facebook groups are not like Pinterest boards. They require a lot more time. You have to comment and do the requirements of the promo threads, such as following people on other social media platforms or sharing their content.

For this reason, I suggest you join 5 or less. Too many and you’ll find you’re just spreading yourself too thin and won’t want to engage in any of them.

HOW DO I JOIN FACEBOOK GROUPS FOR BLOGGERS?

When you visit a Facebook group you’re not a part of, you will see the “Join Group” button, shown below:

Just click this button, and then if there are no requirements, you’re in!

However, a lot of groups have a form you have to fill out or requirements before you join. These might seem annoying, but they stop just anyone joining and make sure only people who should be are part of the group.

HOW CAN I TELL IF A FACEBOOK GROUP IS GOOD BEFORE I JOIN IT?

You can actually tell if the group is worth joining or not before you’ve even joined by considering the following:

1. If the description suggests its engaged, well monitored, and fully relevant to you. You can see before joining if there are chances to promote your blog, if you’re not allowed to share links to your own blog, or if the group is off topic for you e.g it’s a group of mom bloggers and you’re not a mom. Sometimes the rules and schedules are only shown once you’re in the group, for example as a welcome post after joining. So don’t be put off if it’s not clear whether the group is good from the description – it’s just a bonus if it is.
2. Check the ‘Activity’ section to see if it’s an engaged group. This section will tell you how may posts there have been recently; if there are posts being shared regularly, it means the group is active and is more likely to be worth joining. Note that some groups can be active and still not a good group, as they’re full of accounts sharing spammy links, but a group with regularly posting is usually a good sign.
3. Don’t focus on the number of members alone, as this can be misleading. People often think the larger the Facebook group the better it must be, but sometimes a smaller tight-knit group is much better for networking.

WHAT IF I DON’T GET ACCEPTED TO A FACEBOOK GROUP FOR BLOGGERS? 

If you don’t get accepted after you’ve requested to join a Facebook group, don’t take it personally. You might not be suitable for the Facebook group, or it might even be the admins are slow responding to requests. 

If you don’t get accepted within a couple of days, apply for a different Facebook group. You might never get accepted to the group you originally applied to, and you don’t want to sit around waiting when you could be engaging and growing your blog in another group.

That just about wraps up my post all about Facebook groups for bloggers.

If you liked this post and want to know more on getting traffic to your blog check on these posts on how to get blog traffic.

Otherwise, go get joining!

The post The Best Facebook Groups For Bloggers in 2025 appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know one of the main ways I make money blogging is offering Pinterest management.

In fact in my August 2020 income report I made $2,200 through Pinterest services alone!

But I’m beginning to realise that being a Pinterest VA is not really a common thing.

Heck, I’m not even sure that running your own business is common! Compared to how many people work for someone else in a 9-5 that is.

So I’ve decided to start interviewing other people who also do what I do to show that there ARE people who are bossing being their own bosses!

Starting with this interview with a Pinterest strategist.

WHAT IS A PINTEREST STRATEGIST?

So to start it might be helpful to know what a Pinterest strategist is.

And as far as I understand it, a Pinterest strategist is someone who manages different Pinterest accounts and implements strategies for the peson who own the account.

There are other job titles for people who look after Pinterest accounts; for example I refer to myself as a Pinterest manager (even though I do actually implement strategies for my Pinterest clients).

The most common title I’ve come across for people who look after Pinterest accounts for clients however is a Pinterest VA.

But Pinterest strategist, Pinterest manager, Pinterest VA – these titles all fall under the same main job role of looking after Pinterest accounts!

INTERVIEW WITH A PINTEREST STRATEGIST: MEET KAYLA!

To see what it’s like working as a Pinterest strategist, I interviewed someone who’s been at it a lot longer than me.

Read on to find out what Kayla has to say about being a Pinterest Strategist!

1. Tell us about yourself!

I’m Kayla Watkins, a Pinterest Strategist, wife and mom based in Tampa, Florida.

I rarely wear anything other than pyjamas and feel very strongly about my daily cups of coffee.

2. Tell us about your Pinterest Strategist business- when you started, why you started, etc.

I used to be a lifestyle blogger (about 5-6 years ago) and I ended up using Pinterest to bring over 1,000 readers per day, get a consistent RewardStyle payout AND charge 5X more for my sponsored posts. After sharing that with blogger pals, I found out a lot of them had no idea Pinterest could be such a good source of traffic and wanted help getting there.

In 2018, I moved from NYC to Florida and wanted to become self-employed. Luckily, I had a few blogger friends who were asked to pay me to run their accounts so I started out with a couple and grew to a full-time Pinterest strategist 6 months later.

Ever since, I’ve gotten to work with fabulous creative businesses and bloggers to transform their Pinterest strategies.

3. Did you have any relevant experience prior to being a Pinterest Strategist?

My main experience was really just making it work for my blog!

I had worked formally in social media marketing but wasn’t paid for Pinterest until I became a strategist.

4. How long did it take you to find your first client?

I was so lucky to have had blogger friends that took a chance on me within a couple of months of my move to self-employment.

Really the clients and need came before I even created the business!

5. How many clients do you work with now?

I currently have about 15 clients, but it’s no longer just me!

Before my daughter was born, I hired a Pinterest Associate who helps implement the Pinterest strategies I create for a majority of my clients.

I also have a virtual assistant who helps with tracking my clients’ analytics and keeps up with invoicing. I couldn’t do it without my contractor team!

6. What’s your schedule like as a Pinterest Strategist? How many hours do you work a week, etc? 

I’m currently still adjusting to life as a mom and Pinterest Strategist so this answer may change, but at the moment: I only work 20- 25 hours/week.

I actually start my day at 6am (an hour before my daughter wakes up) and typically work until about 10am Monday- Wednesday.

After 10am, I mainly hang out with my baby and maybe sneak in a few emails and tasks during her nap time.

7. Realistically, how much can you earn working full-time as a Pinterest Strategist? 

Oh geez, this is a hard one! Ha.

If I’m being honest, I’d say there is a ceiling for the amount you can earn if managing clients’ accounts is the only thing you do. If that’s your business model, then realistically you can probably manage 20 clients/month without outsourcing and with working a full 40 hours/week. And probably only if you have a killer marketing strategy that keeps these leads coming in which may require additional hours.

That being said, I think you could make $150K pretty easily from that model.

But if you want to scale further or want to work less, you’d be looking at an agency model OR have to add additional income streams like coaching, courses or digital download products for passive income. In that case, the skies the limit!

8. What’s your FAVORITE thing about being a Pinterest Strategist? 

I love that it gives me my dream life. I don’t have to work 40 hours/week. I can work from anywhere. I don’t have to ask for time off. I don’t have to miss out on anything because of work.

9. Do you offer any Pinterest training?

I do! One of the ways I am working on scaling my business is by creating a group coaching program called “Pinterest for Bloggers.” This is a 12 week group coaching program that will take bloggers who struggle with getting people to their site to having a fully functional Pinterest profile that gives them consistent traffic (while only spending 1 hour/week on the platform). I’ll teach a bite size piece of  Pinterest marketing via weekly Facebook lives and will be available for unlimited support in our private Facebook group. 

P.S. You definitely don’t have to label yourself as a blogger to take this course. The same things I teach will apply to anyone that has a blog on their site or some sort of content marketing strategy. While all creative entrepreneurs, creatives service providers and e-commerce shops can benefit from the platform, this course will speak specifically to people who create blog posts consistently.

If you’re interested in learning more about my business, please don’t hesitate to reach out by DM-ing me on Instagram. I’d love to chat about creating a Pinterest biz!

BEING A PINTEREST STRATEGIST: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into what it’s like to be a full time Pinterest strategist!

If you did enjoy this post please share it:

And check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• What it’s really like to be a Pinterest VA: interview with Amanda
• Check out the best passive income methods for bloggers

The post What’s it like being a Pinterest strategist? appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

I can’t believe summer is over now!

If you read my last income report you’ll know that I lined up a new client for a monthly service in July, ready to start in August.

Well this is the first month working with all my clients, and I can’t believe how much it’s increased my blogging income.

Another month of earning over $2k!

I know you’re probably sick of seeing me write that in bold italics.

But in all honesty, I still can’t believe I am making this much from my blog.

Because just over a year ago I was making a few hundred dollars a month.

Take a look…

MY PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS

• FIRST INCOME REPORT: July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• FIRST $1k MONTH: November 2019: How I made $1,225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week
• February 2020: How I made $1,047 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• March 2020: How I made $1125 blogging (whilst in isolation)
• April 2020: How I made $1826 blogging
• FIRST $2k MONTH: July 2020: How I made $2,159 blogging

So you can see in July 2019 I made around $400 from my blog… But in July 2020 I made over $2,000.

And if you’d had told me last July I would make this much the following year, I don’t think I’d have believed you!

So this is why I still write how much I’m earning in bold italics like it’s a big deal.

Because for me, it is!

I never thought I’d make a full-time income online doing what I love, and I’m so grateful that I am now able to.

So here it is; my blogging income report for August.

MY BLOGGING STATS

I always start my income report with my current blogging stats, so I can look back and see how my blog is doing (and to prove you don’t necessarily need a big platform!).

Below are my current stats:

PINTEREST STATS

Pinterest is responsible for the majority of my blog traffic.

My Pinterest account is here, and in August I reached:

• 11,397 followers
• 2.8 million monthly viewers

As I always note, my Pinterest account is just naturally growing by itself now without me putting much effort into it and my reach seems to stay high.

And whilst I’m happy with the consistent growth, I know there is room to grow more here (as I haven’t been active for my own account on Pinterest for quite some time!).

MY BLOG VIEWS

My traffic dropped slightly this month to around 14k sessions/ 18k page views:

I know a lot of bloggers experience a decrease in traffic over summer (known as “the summer slump”) as more people are out enjoy their time off rather than being active online.

So whilst it is frustrating for me to see a decrease in traffic, considering I don’t do much to get it I am pretty happy to have 18k page views a month!

But of course, I really need to work on a strategy to make sure I am growing my blog each month.

MY EMAIL STATS

This was a good month for subscriber growth for me:

It’s not as much as a growth as last month (where I gained around 170 subscribers!), but I am quite happy with around +120 subscribers each month without having to actively gain them.

But as with all my other blog stats, I am sure there is a way for me to gain a faster rate of growth!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here’s the bit you’ve been waiting (scrolling?) for!

A breakdown of my blogging income.

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

August 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a breakdown of this income:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings:

Again, this has been another poor month for me in terms of affiliate marketing.

Now I don’t mean poor as in “I worked really hard and something’s not working” kinda poor.

I mean poor as in I didn’t really earn much.

And considering I had months earlier in the year where I was making $500 a month from affiliate marketing, this is not good growth.

However, I literally don’t do anything for my affiliate income.

It’s all passive.

So earning $175 without doing anything is actually pretty great!

I just know I could be earning more.

ADVERTISING INCOME

So another bad months for ads…

My session RPM is mega low (even lower than last month).

And when you consider at the beginning of the year it was almost $10 and I was earning around $130 a month from ads, you can see why I’m unhappy with this form of income.

(And not only that, but this month I accidentally switched off the plugin which allows me to make money with ads on my blog. So for a while, my income from ads was literally $0 a day. Big woops!).

I’ve actually made plans with the ad company I’m with to switch ads off permanently in the next 30 days, as I don’t feel they’re worth having on my blog at the moment.

But I know there are bloggers making thousands of dollars every month just from having ads on their blog!

So I need to work on getting more traffic to my blog, so I can make more passive income with ads eventually.

PRODUCT SALES

So in April I made over $230 from product sales, and in July I made $113.

And this month, I made even less:

So yes, I’m a little sad to see my income from selling products go down.

BUT, I have to remind myself this is another form of passive income (as these sales are from a tripwire I have set up so I don’t need to actively work to make them).

So not great when you consider there are bloggers making thousands from digital product sales each month, but pretty cool when I think I didn’t have to work for this money.

SERVICES INCOME

I think looking at my forms of passive income it’s pretty plain to see I have been impacted by “the summer slump”, as less people are reading my blog and so I make less money passively.

However, my services income is where I make up for my other failings!

I’m aware the total of this is over the $2,200 but there is a service fee for each transaction so I do not get all the money myself!

I am now officially a full-time Pinterest manager helping bloggers and business owners with their Pinterest presence.

This is the form of income I have managed to grow the most, and is my “safest” form of income as it’s the most consistent.

And whilst I do have to actually work for this (it’s not passive income like my other income streams), I am able to work my own hours doing something I enjoy (as I love working with my clients!).

So this is the form of income I am the most proud of and happy with currently.

BLOGGING EXPENSES

So that covers all the money that I had coming in for the month (which is the most I have ever had come in online!).

But in the interest of transparency, here are the expenses that have gone out:

Here’s a breakdown of what each expense is:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I pay for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, but you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. I pay for mine and recently started paying more as I have more subscribers. But MailerLite is free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my Pinterest guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• CANVA PRO: As a Pinterest manager the pro version really helps me as a Pinterest manager, as I can access more of the stock photos and fonts Canva pro offers (so I can create awesome pins for my clients). “Normal” bloggers wouldn’t need this however.
• GSUITE: I’m certain there’s a way of doing this for free so you don’t need to pay for it, but I pay for Gsuite to have an email address that’s my website (aka emily@easyblogemily.com rather than easyblogemily@gmail.com as it’s more professional).
• STOCK PHOTOS: This is expensive, but for me it’s worth the price as it saves me a lot of time looking for them (which means I spend less time working for my clients, therefore upping my hourly rate!).

So you can see I do spend quite a bit.

HOWEVER, the expenses are relatively low in comparison to the profit I make.

Plus this isn’t a “normal” amount for a blogger to spend each month!

New bloggers would spend less than $20 a month;

• Tailwind isn’t a necessity for Pinterest
• You’d only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product
• Mailerlite is free for up to 1000 subscribers
• You don’t need Canva Pro or a stock photo subscription at all

So really you’d only need blog hosting and perhaps Gsuite, which would be around $10 a month altogether!

That’s my income for the month covered; here are my goals for following months.

BLOGGING GOALS

My blogging goals never really change that much month to month.

But every now and then I get to cross one off as I’ve achieved it!

So I keep noting down my long term blogging goals at the end of each income report (as hopefully I’ll be able to look back in the future and see how far I’ve come!)

My blogging goals are:

• Earn $500 a month from each passive income stream. This is a loong way off! But earning $500 from each form of passive income stream on my blog will mean at least $1,500 a month from my blog passively (which will be awesome).
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I invested in a course for SEO, but haven’t actually been through it yet! So hopefully one I start implementing it I will gain more organic search traffic.
• Reach 50k sessions a month. This will up my passive income from ads considerably, but I’m a mile off from this right now.
• Build more of a community and help beginner bloggers. This is the main reason I started this blog and what I want to continue to do – it’s my mission to help other bloggers achieve their blogging goals!

MY LAST BLOGGING INCOME REPORT…

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my August blogging income report because I’m saying goodbye to them (for now)!

Now I know a lot of my readers enjoy my income reports, and I haven’t change my thoughts on them at all; I think blogging income reports are great for transparency and to show how much people can really make online (I wouldn’t have known you could actually make money blogging if I hadn’t read a blogging income report myself).

However, I have a full year’s worth of blogging income reports up now.

And I think they’ve served their purpose at this moment in time.

You’ve been able to see my journey from a beginner blogger making a few hundred dollars a month to scaling my income and making over $2k a month (which I hope has been as inspiring for you as it has been exciting for me!).

But now I’ve reached a point where I feel I need to take a step back and start putting more work in behind the scenes to really scale my income beyond $2k a month.

I’m sure as a reader you’re getting sick of me saying “Oh, I need to get more traffic!” and “I need to work on my affiliate marketing strategy!” every month.

Because I’m really not doing enough right now to make these positive changes.

And I think the best way for me start to actually make these changes will be to take myself away from any potential scrutiny and pressure from people to keep making more money each month (I’m aware this is pressure I am probably putting on myself! But pressure I am feeling nonetheless).

So whilst I do still love blogging income reports and will probably publish more in the future (when I hopefully have exciting progress to share), for now I am saying goodbye to them.

But I really hope you have enjoyed them, and if you’re not already subscribed you can sign up to learn how to start making passive income below (as my email list will be the first to know about any blogging income updates I have!):

Otherwise, this is the end of my last blogging income report.

Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts you would like me to see!

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

AUGUST BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post AUGUST INCOME REPORT: How I made $2,503 blogging appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

Hey everyone!

So it’s been a while since I posted a blogging income report (my last one was in April, which I will link further down).

But DO NOT WORRY – I haven’t fallen off the face off the Earth!

Just these last few months I have really been struggling with my time management.

I took on more clients (which you will see when we reach the income section) and was struggling managing work full-time, client work, and then ALSO blogging on top.

(Well actually the blogging on top didn’t really happen, hence why there were no income reports!).

But I’m back this month with some really exciting updates for you…

…The most exciting one being I had my highest month of blogging income yet.

In July I earned over $2,000!

MY PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS

Before I talk about my blog income for this July, if you want to see my journey of making money from my blog you can check out my previous income reports below:

• FIRST INCOME REPORT: July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• FIRST $1k MONTH: November 2019: How I made $1,225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week
• February 2020: How I made $1,047 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• March 2020: How I made $1125 blogging (whilst in isolation)
• April 2020: How I made $1826 blogging

REACHING $2k months

You can see it really is a long process; a year ago I earned around $300 from my blog (and there were months before that where I didn’t earn anything at all!).

But now finally I have started making $2,000 a month from blogging.

Reaching $2k months was one of my main goals for blogging this year, so I am really proud of myself that I have managed to make it happen in July.

So let’s get onto how I made $2,000 blogging this month!

MY BLOGGING STATS

I always share my current blogging stats in each income report just to track how my blog is doing.

Below are my current stats:

PINTEREST STATS

Pinterest is still the main way I get traffic to my blog.

My Pinterest account is here, and in July I reached:

• 11,031 followers
• 2.8 million monthly viewers

As with most months, my Pinterest account is just naturally growing by itself now without me putting much effort into it.

I also seem to have settled with my monthly viewers being over 2 million, which is awesome!

So I’m pretty happy with my Pinterest account at the moment.

MY BLOG VIEWS

My traffic is at around 15k sessions a month:

I’m glad to see my traffic is becoming more diverse, with there gradually being more traffic from Google too.

But I’m still a LONG way off the requirements for MediaVine (they recently changed it from needing 25k sessions a month to needing 50k sessions!), and it’s a long term game plan to reach the requirements and get decent ad income.

MY EMAIL STATS

So I gained even more subscribers again this month:

I am really happy with this, as my new subscriber count is much higher than normal and my unsubs are lower.

However, I know why the unsubs are crazy low…

It’s because I haven’t sent any emails in months!

And I have no doubt if I was sending regular emails, I would have gained more unsubs in July.

But for now I will take the win of gaining over 150 new subscribers.

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for July.

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

July 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a closer look at my income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month:

So this has not been a great month for me in terms of affiliate marketing.

In April I made over $500 from affiliate sales… But this month I barely made $200.

Now I’m thankful to earn any money at all from affiliate marketing (as it is mostly passive).

But I know there is potential to make sure my affiliate earnings are consistent month to month, and to make a substantial amount from it (some bloggers make their full-time income from affiliate sales alone!).

So this is something to work on.

ADVERTISING INCOME

I AM SICK OF ADS!

In July I made a measly $43 from adverts on my blog:

And when you consider that in January I made over $130 from ads, you can understand why I am feeling frustrated with this form of income.

It’s also worth noting this dip in earnings has not been because I am getting less traffic (I am actually getting more).

It’s because my RPM has gone down massively; it used to be almost $10, but in July it was under $3.

(Which basically means I need to triple my traffic if I want to earn what I was earning at the beginning of the year from adverts).

Making a decent amount of money from ads is something I want to do eventually… But for now it just seems like a lot of effort for not very much reward!

PRODUCT SALES

In April I made over $230 from product sales.

So to have made only $113 this month is a bit gutting:

However, the money I make from product sales is completely passive (I usually make most of my sales from people subscribing to my email list).

So to be consistently making over $100 a month without actually doing anything is great.

And that’s with only 2 products – I can’t wait to see what my product income is like when I eventually create more products!

SERVICES INCOME

I’m aware the total of this is over $1,800 but there is a service fee so I do not get all the money!

This is the form of income I have really managed to grow and scale; as most of you will know, I began offering Pinterest management services after finding success with my own Pinterest account and blog from using it.

So all of my service income is from managing other people’s Pinterest accounts.

I also feel like this is my most consistent form of blogging income.

As I get paid at the beginning of the month from my clients, and then I can relax a little knowing that I have definitely earned some blogging income (of course, I do the work for them! Just knowing I have income coming in is great).

In my last income report I actually wrote that I was pausing a contract with one of my clients due to COVID, which would mean my income would be going down.

I also wrote it was one of my goals to gain X4 more clients, as then I’d be almost matching the income from my full-time job (and any product sales, affiliate income or ad income would be a nice little bonus).

Well I’m really pleased to say I have gained X4 more clients!!

I actually can’t believe I have gained this many clients in such a short space of time, and the difference it has made to my income is huge.

(And in August my blogging income from services will go up again, as some of the income this month was for a one off Pinterest package but we are going to be working together in August for full-time management!!)

I also LOVE working with my clients and helping them grow their accounts, so to be earning money doing something I love and working the hours I want is honestly amazing.

BLOGGING EXPENSES

That covers how much money I had coming in for the month, which I am really happy with.

But here are the expenses that have gone out (they are actually quite high for a blogger, but relatively low when you consider the profit I make):

Here’s a breakdown of what each expense is:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I pay for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, but I’m not really sure I need to be spending this much on it anymore… either way, you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. I pay for mine and recently started paying more as I have more subscribers now (I should probably start emailing my list more haha!). But MailerLite is free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my Pinterest guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• CANVA PRO: I was already super happy with the free version of Canva, and I think if you’re a normal blogger (as oppose to one who also creates pins for other bloggers!) you won’t really need Canva pro as the free version has so much! But as I’m a Pinterest manager, it really helps to have access to more of the stock photos and fonts Canva pro offers (so I can create awesome pins for my clients).
• GSUITE: I’m certain there’s a way of doing this for free so you don’t need to pay for it, but I pay for Gsuite to have an email address that’s my website (aka emily@easyblogemily.com rather than easyblogemily@gmail.com as it’s more professional).
• STOCK PHOTOS: In the interest of saving myself time, instead of spending hours looking for photographs to use for pins I have now started paying for a stock photos subscription. It is expensive, but for me it’s worth it as they have soo many good photographs and it saves me a lot of time looking for them (which means I spend less time working for my clients, therefore upping my hourly rate!).

So you can see I do spend a lot…

But most new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (Tailwind isn’t a necessity for Pinterest, you’d only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product, Mailerlite is free for up to 1000 subscribers, and you don’t need Canva Pro or a stock photo subscription at all. So really you’d only need blog hosting and perhaps Gsuite).

So you can see expenses are low in terms of profit and other business costs!

BLOGGING GOALS

I always share my blogging goals so I can hopefully look back in the future and see how far I’ve come.

So these are my long term blogging goals:

• Have consistent $2k months. I can’t believe that my long term goal this time last year was to earn $1k a month consistently, and now I’ve reached a $2k month (and should do consistently thanks to my clients!). So I’ve now adjusted my goal to…
• Earn $500 a month from each passive income stream. I think this will be super hard, as I am currently only earning $40 a month from ads and I barely made $100 from product sales this month! But earning $500 from each form of passive income stream on my blog will mean at least $1,500 a month from my blog passively (which will be awesome).
• Gain 4 more Pinterest clients. I put this as a long term goal for the year so I can match my income from my full-time job, but I’m amazed that I’ve now done this! And I’m pretty happy with this income, so I’m not really looking for any more clients.
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I’m at 3k sessions a month from Google currently, and I’ve invested in a course for SEO… So once I’ve actually started implementing it I will hopefully start getting more organic search traffic.
• Reach 50k sessions a month. This will up my passive income from ads considerably, but I’m a mile off from this right now.
• Build more of a community and help beginner bloggers. This is the main reason I started this blog and what I want to continue to do – it’s my mission to help other bloggers achieve their blogging goals!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my July blogging income report – it’s such a good feeling to see my blogging income growing, and to take note of the areas I need to improve (passive income, where you at?!).

Please comment below if you have any questions about making money blogging after reading this income report!

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

JULY BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post JULY INCOME REPORT: How I made $2,159 blogging appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

Wow- what a month!

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I’m based in the UK and have been working my full-time job (40 hours a week) from home since the end of March.

This was my first full month working from home, whilst also trying to blog.

And I’d be lying if I said it was easy.

I’ve really been struggling to find the time to do it all!

And after having another month earning over $1000 from my blog in March, I was certain it wasn’t going to happen again.

However, I am absolutely ecstatic to share that I have had my highest earning month from my blog yet.

Over $1800!!

SO WHY DO I SHARE MY BLOGGING INCOME?

I know you might be reading this wondering why I’d even share what I earn on my blog.

But there isn’t much information out there about bloggers really making money and how they do it.

So I hope that by showing you my blogging income, I assure you that making money blogging can be done.

And if I can do it, there’s no reason you can’t either!

MY PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS

Now, just because you can make money blogging, it does NOT mean that;

• It is easy to do. It took me MONTHS before I finally started to make any money from my blog, and it took even longer to make a decent amount from it.
• The income is consistent. I’m about to link all my previous income reports, and you’ll notice that the money I earn is not guaranteed OR consistent.

In fact, I had my first $1000 and was thrilled… But then went back to earning around $800 a month for a few months after.

But here are all my previous blogging income reports!

• FIRST INCOME REPORT: July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• FIRST $1k MONTH: November 2019: How I made $1,225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week
• February 2020: How I made $1,047 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• March 2020: How I made $1125 blogging (whilst in isolation)

You can see less than a year ago, I earned around $300 from my blog…

So to have earned over $1800 this month is amazing!

And I’m super proud that all the work I have put into my blog is finally paying off.

So here it is- my blogging income report!

MY BLOGGING STATS

I always share my current blogging stats in each income report to show you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money blogging!

Below are my current stats:

PINTEREST STATS

Pinterest is the sole reason I’ve made any money online!

It is so amazing for helping bloggers get traffic.

My Pinterest account is the focus of my traffic strategy, and in April I reached:

• 9,111 followers (+618)
• 2.1 million monthly viewers (+0.2 million)

My account has gone up quite a bit this month.

In March I only gained around 400 followers, so over 600 this month is pretty good.

Plus I gained an extra 0.2 million monthly unique viewers!

So until I work on improving my Pinterest strategy, I’m expecting to gain around 400-600 followers a month, and hover between a reach of 1 million and 2 million.

So I’m certainly not complaining!

MY BLOG VIEWS

In my last report I wrote I was a bit gutted with the decrease in traffic I saw in March…

So I’m glad to see it’s back up:

My traffic is actually up in all areas, which is nice!

I just really want more traffic than this in the long term, so I can grow my income.

MY EMAIL STATS

So I gained more new subscribers than usual this month!

And DO NOT WORRY- I know the unsub count looks crazy higher than I normally report!

But I’m getting close to the maximum amount of subscribers I’m allowed on my current email plan, before I have to pay more to upgrade.

So I’ve been clearing out my list more regularly.

But again- I still need to up my email strategy to gain more subscribers each month somehow.

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for April.

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

April 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a closer look at my income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month:

This has been amazing for me in terms of affiliate marketing!

As last month I made under $200 from affiliate marketing…

So to have made over double that from just one affiliate programme is crazy!

However, this is why I don’t see affiliate income as a secure form of income yet- next month I could go back to earning less than $200 from affiliate marketing.

But I’m thankful that I am able to earn this money passively, and I know there is potential to make sure my affiliate earning is consistent month to month.

So it is in my long term plans to refine my affiliate strategy!

ADVERTISING INCOME

So this month my passive income from ads TANKED:

I’ve had months of earning over $140 from ads with similar traffic to this month, so there’s no denying this has decreased drastically.

And the annoying thing is there is nothing I can do.

My RPM has gone down massively (it used to be almost $10)…

So basically even if I did get a load of page views, my income would still not be as much as it could be if there wasn’t a pandemic right now (and my RPM was normal).

But I do want to work to get more blog page views eventually- I know of bloggers who make double my total blogging income this month from ads alone, which is just crazy!

PRODUCT SALES

Last month AND the month before I said I was unhappy with the income I’d made from my product sales…

But this month I’ve made the most income from product sales I’ve ever had!

You can see I made product sales pretty much each day for half of April (on and off), and I’m really pleased to see people are buying my products without me doing anything at all to achieve this.

No sales, no promotion, nothing.

Just all the work I’ve put in previously (setting up tripwires, email automation, etc) has resulted in this income in April.

So I’m super pleased to see the true power of passive income.

And I’m really excited to see what I can earn in the future when I have more products to offer, and create a stronger sales strategy!

SERVICES INCOME

(I have stopped showing screenshots of my service income to protect client details. But please trust me in that I had 5 clients this month, and earned $949.50!).

I am really happy with this form of income.

It feels like the most secure and consistent income out of all the different income streams I have on my blog, and I really enjoy working with my clients!

Having said that–

I’m super gutted to say that next month I am pausing my contracts with one of my clients.

They are in the travel niche, and it just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective to continue with management right now.

So whilst my income will go down next month, this client has made it clear they want to carry on working together again once everything goes back to normal.

I also want to note that whilst I’m super happy with this form of income right now, my goal is to gain X 4 more clients.

As then I’ll be earning the same amount from my full-time job just from services alone!

And any product sales, affiliate income or ad income will be extra.

So I’m happy for now, but know I want more.

I’ve actually spoken to around 4 potential clients this month, but nothing solid has been confirmed yet (some were travel bloggers and now just isn’t the right time, some didn’t work out- with business there will be a hundred no’s before you get your first yes!).

But I know that if I can gain 3 clients in a single month (which I did earlier this year), I can definitely find 4 more to match my full-time income.

BLOGGING EXPENSES

My blogging expenses are actually quite high for a blogger!

But here are my monthly expenses:

Here’s a breakdown of what each expense is:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• CANVA PRO: I was already super happy with the free version of Canva, and I think if you’re a normal blogger you won’t really need Canva pro! But as I’m a Pinterest manager, it really helps to have access to more of the stock photos and fonts Canva pro offers (so I can create awesome pins for my clients!).
• GSUITE: I’m certain there’s a way of doing this for free so you don’t need to pay for it, but I pay for Gsuite to have an email address that’s my website (aka emily@easyblogemily.com rather than easyblogemily@gmail.com as it’s more professional!).

But most new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity for Pinterest, you’d only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product, Mailerlite is free for up to 1000 subscribers and you don’t need Canva Pro at all! So really you’d only need blog hosting and perhaps Gsuite).

So you can see expenses are low in terms of profit and other business costs!

BLOGGING GOALS

I always share my blogging goals, so I can hopefully look back in the future and see how far I’ve come.

So these are my long term blogging goals:

• Have consistent $2k months. My long term goal originally was to earn $1k a month consistently, and now I’ve done that a few times I think I need to push myself a bit more. So I haven’t achieved this just yet, but I’m getting close!
• Gain 4 more Pinterest clients. My long term goal is to gain another 4 clients so I can comfortably earn more than I do in my full-time job from my blog.
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. This is still a long way off, but I bought a blogging course for SEO this month and I really hope it will help when I get round to going through it!
• Reach 50k sessions a month. This will up my passive income from ads considerably.
• Build more of a community and help beginner bloggers. My long term goal is to help new bloggers and make blogging easy. I’m honestly thrilled that I’ve gone from not knowing what WordPress is to almost matching my full-time income from blogging, and now it’s my mission to help other people do the same!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my April blogging income report.

As I’m so excited to see my blogging income growing.

And hopefully I will be able to continue!

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

APRIL BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post APRIL INCOME REPORT: How I made $1,826 blogging (whilst working full-time) appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

What a strange month it’s been!

After making over $1000 on my blog in February, I was ready to hit March with all I had to make sure I had another $1k month under my belt.

And then Corona happened.

I started working my full-time job from home, and had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that a $1k month was NOT happening right now.

Not that the money I make from my blog matters too much currently- I have my health and a full-time stable job that can be done remotely, which I know others are not so fortunate to have. So I’m seriously grateful to be where I am right now.

However, it came to the end of the month and I added up my blogging income…

And whilst areas of my blogging income have taken a hit, I’m thrilled to say I’ve had another month earning over $1000 from my blog!

WHY DO I SHARE MY BLOGGING INCOME?

I do not do this to show off in any way.

I simply hope that by sharing my blogging income, it shows other aspiring bloggers that making money blogging can be done.

As I actually blogged for a long time before (we’re talking over a year) without making any money at all… And it was reading income reports from numerous bloggers which kept me focused on the idea that monetising my blog could happen and would happen.

So when I did earn some income from my blog in July 2019, I was absolutely thrilled!

And I knew I needed to share what I had learned to finally make money blogging.

If you want to read my first ever income report (or how I excited I was to reach a $1k month blogging just 5 months after my first income report!), you can check out all my previous blogging income reports below:

• FIRST INCOME REPORT: July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• FIRST $1k MONTH: November 2019: How I made $1,225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week
• February 2020: How I made $1,047 blogging (whilst working full-time)

Now as you can see, I’ve only just consistently started making over $800 in the last few months.

So I’m seriously thrilled and thankful to have made over $1000 this month given the circumstances!

And I will share more about how I made this money in a moment.

MY BLOGGING STATS

Before I start my income report, I always share my current blogging stats.

Why?

So new bloggers can see you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money blogging!

Below are my current stats:

PINTEREST STATS

If you’ve read my blog ever, you’ll know Pinterest is my jam!

I literally do not shut up about how great it is for beginner bloggers (or any blogger for that matter) to get traffic.

My Pinterest account is actually the main social media platform I use to get traffic, and in March I reached:

• 8,493 followers (+474)
• 1.9 million monthly viewers (no change)

I’m really pleased with my account- it seems to be growing naturally on its own, and I’m consistently getting over 100 followers a week!

I just know I could be getting more blog traffic from it considering my reach… So I want to work on this at some point in the future.

MY BLOG VIEWS

So given my blog traffic soared to over 20k page views in February, I was really disappointed to see the drop in traffic this month:

You can see that the biggest drop is firstly from referral, then followed by organic search.

And if I’m honest, I’m not surprised.

I was pretty certain at the time my referral traffic wasn’t going to last long, and the organic search traffic from Google was because I had a seasonal post rank well (and now that post is no longer relevant).

So I’m a bit disappointed, but not devastated- I still think it’s a good amount of varied traffic for my niche for now!

But I know eventually I want my blog to be much bigger than it is currently, and get way more traffic.

MY EMAIL STATS

So not a great month for email subscribers!

As even though I got 140, I also lost almost half that amount:

However, I’m not mad about the unsubs.

As I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- there’s no use having someone on your email list that doesn’t want to be there.

Because they don’t want to read your emails… So they sure as heck won’t be reading any posts you send, buying any products you recommend, etc!

Basically it’s better to have a small highly engaged email list than a big one where hardly anyone opens your emails.

So I’m not mad about the unsubs… I just want to work on getting more subscribers who really value me and my content!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for March.

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

March 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a closer look at my income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month:

I earned an extra $50 through affiliate marketing this month, which is pretty cool.

But my attitude is the same as last month- that it’s nice to have affiliate income, but I don’t really see it as a secure income currently.

But I know it has the potential to be a big earner, as some people earn a full-time income from it!

So I do want to master my affiliate strategy…

But that’s on my long term to do list.

ADVERTISING INCOME

I literally don’t do anything to earn money from ads; it’s all passive.

But I always get a little frustrated when it fluctuates wildly.

And this month, my advertising income went down by over $30:

There’s not really much I can do about this, unless I work super duper hard and try to get into a better premium ad network (and all the extra traffic would up my income!).

And I hate to give spoilers, but I’m writing this about a week into March… And already I can see my ad income has tanked.

So there’s absolutely no way this is going to be a winning way for me to get decent blogging income any time soon!

(But I’m not completely discounting it: in this blog post where I interviewed bloggers making $1000+ a month, Kristin from TheWaywardHome.com makes around $1500 from ads alone!).

PRODUCT SALES

I said that last month I was unhappy with the income I’d made from my product sales, as I made around $80 this month… but in November I made over $190 in product sales!

So to see this halve has been a disappointment, and this month it’s a similar story:

However, as always I’m trying to look on the bright side;

1. It’s pretty cool that I can made $85.77 pretty much without doing anything (I haven’t had a sale on my guide in ages!)
2. If I can earn this amount with just one ebook, I have a few ideas in mind for more… So hopefully as I expand my products, my income will grow too!

And again – no spoilers – but April is looking pretty good for product sales!

So for now, I’m happy

SERVICES INCOME

Now this form of income is the real breadwinner on my blog.

And it’s something I’m really proud of- I know it can be really tricky to get clients, but I’ve been so fortunate and driven in finding dream clients!

In fact, last month I promised myself I wouldn’t take on any more client work as I took on 3 in one month.

But then a client came along who was literally my dream client…

The potential for their account was undeniable! And there was no way I was turning it down.

So I went for it, and now they’re working with me long term.

This form of income feels the most secure on my blog, and is probably one of my favourite ways to earn money right now.

And I just hope I keep getting new clients!

BLOGGING EXPENSES

Unfortunately, running a blog is low cost but it is NOT free.

So here are my monthly expenses:

Now, you can see my expenses have increased slightly compared to before.

Because I have actually been paying for Gsuite since forever (to have my own blog email address), but completely forgot to add it into my blogging expenses!

However the actual new expense I have is Canva Pro.

For those of you who don’t know, Canva is a pretty awesome online design software.

And now that I’m a Pinterest manager, I just really need the extra features Canva Pro has!

Which includes:

• More stock photographs to chose from, so I can make pin designs for clients quicker
• Multiple folders, so I can organise all my designs into different client folders

Now I was hesitant to add another blogging expense onto the list.

But when I realised that even just one of my client payments covers all my blogging expenses..

And I realised the amount of time I’d save not having to search the internet to find decent images to create gorgeous pins….

Well it really was a no brainer- time is money, and now using the extra features in Canva Pro I’m absolutely positive I made the right choice!

You’ll notice I’ve also split the difference between the things I pay for that are monthly, and how much they could be if they were paid for annually.

Just to show that my expenses (which are very high for a blogger, but crazy low for any other business) could even be lower again!

Just to explain what each expense is:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.

So whilst I pay around $100, new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity! And you would only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product).

And it’s important to remember that whilst I do pay some things monthly, there’s not $100 going out of my account each month (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year).

BLOGGING GOALS

I share my blogging goals to keep me on track.

Plus, it’s nice to look back and see how far you’ve come.

For example when I set up email marketing for my blog, my first goal was just to even get a single subscriber.

And now I get around 100 a month!

So these are my long term blogging goals:

• Have consistent $1k $2k months. My long term goal originally was to earn $1k a month consistently…. But now I’ve had a second one in a row, this crazy-far-off-goal I never thought I’d achieve seems to be happening regularly! So now my new goal to push myself is to have $2k months regularly.
• Gain 4 more Pinterest clients. My original long term goal was to gain 4 Pinterest clients… And now I have 5! But my long term goal is to gain another 4, as that way I’d be making more than I do in my full-time job working 40 hours a week!
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. This isn’t looking great after this month, but I know the true power of SEO and want to harness that for my blog in the long run.
• Reach 50k sessions a month. If I’m making around $1k a month with under 20k page views, I can only imagine what over double that would look like!
• Build more of a community and help beginner bloggers. This one is new, but my long term goal always is to remember why I started EBE- to help new bloggers and make blogging easy. I’m honestly thrilled that I’ve gone from not knowing what WordPress is to making $1k a month blogging, and now it’s my mission to help other people do the same!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve really enjoyed my March blogging income report!

And I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it- I know it’s a very stressful and scary time right now, so I really hope this post has made you feel positive and uplifted (as that’s what I aim to do!).

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

MARCH BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post MARCH INCOME REPORT: How I made $1154 blogging (whilst working full-time) appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

If you want to make money blogging, you’ve probably thought about adding services to your blog or website.

Because passive income is the ultimate income. The kind where you wake up to emails letting you know you’ve made money (yes, this really happens. You can read my blogging income report to see how most of it was passive).

BUT, passive income can take time.

And if you want to start making money blogging ASAP, one of the best ways is to start offering services on your blog.

Now, as much as I’m thrilled to be making passive income with my blog, I also decided to started offering services on EBE.

One of which is Pinterest management.

Why?

Because I love using Pinterest to grow my blog- I’m a bit of a Pinterest addict, and I feel like I’ve reached the point where I want to help other people with my knowledge.

I get almost 150 followers every week, and I have a reach of over 1 million monthly viewers! And I know this skill could be beneficial to other bloggers or business owners.

But when I told my subscribers I was starting to offer this services, many of them didn’t know what a Pinterest VA was!

So whether you want to become a Pinterest VA now, or you’re interested in knowing more about what they do, this post is about what it’s really like to be a Pinterest VA.

WHAT IS A VA?

To start, it might be helpful to know generally what a VA actually is.

A VA is a virtual assistant.

So if you were to offer VA services, you would virtually assist someone with a service in exchange for money.

There are tonnes of different VA services you can offer, such as email, admin, book keeping, etc.

But one you might not have heard of is a Pinterest VA.

WHAT IS A PINTEREST VA?

A Pinterest VA is like a very specialised social media manager.

They manage another person’s or businesses Pinterest account.

HOW MUCH CAN A PINTEREST VA MAKE?

A full-time income!

Believe it or not, with enough clients you can make a full-time income by managing other people’s Pinterest accounts.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BECOME A PINTEREST VA?

Becoming a Pinterest VA does not require a lot.

To become one, all you need is:

1. A website so you can book potential clients and gain new leads. If you haven’t started your own website yet, you can read my free guide here.
2. A laptop or computer to do your work on.
3. Knowledge of Pinterest. You can’t offer your expertise and grow other people’s Pinterest accounts if you don’t know how to use the platform!

If you’re interested in learning how to use Pinterest so you can one day become a VA (or even just to learn how to get more traffic to your own blog or biz), make sure to sign up for my free email course Easy Pinterest with Emily.

It’ll teach you how to go from Pinterest beginner to pro pinner- you can read more about it here, or just sign up below to start learning now!

WHAT’S IT REALLY LIKE BEING A PINTEREST VA?

I’m pretty new to offering Pinterest services, and I rely on other forms of income streams to make money from blogging right now.

But, someone who is a Pinterest VA pro is my friend Amanda from Simply Amanda.

She has been a full-time Pinterest manager for over a year now.

And she is here to tell you a little bit more about it!

1. Tell us about yourself

Hey! My name is Amanda and I run Simply Amanda.

I teach women how to turn their hobby blogs into full-blown online businesses using Pinterest marketing, and my own tried and tested blogging strategies.

I’m also a full-time Pinterest Account Manager!

2. Tell us about your blog- when you started, why you started, etc

My blog actually started off as a beauty blog!

A lot of people might not realize that – and I actually never went back and deleted my old blog posts so if you go back far enough, you can find it!

I had a passion for makeup (still do!) so I started my blog as a hobby while I was in college as a fun escape from the heavy workload of full-time school and a part-time job.

A few months into my blogging journey, I decided I wanted to take it more seriously and grow my traffic.

And while I was researching how to do that, I basically hit a goldmine of information on the internet!

I didn’t even know blogging could turn into a full-time business, but when I discovered that it was indeed a thing – I was hooked on making that my reality.

I eventually started trying out different strategies and monetizing my blog. It was a really great side hustle for a while!

Then, I discovered one of my favorite blogs to date talking about how she used Pinterest to grow her blog.

I decided to give that a shot and I got incredible results, so for some reason I felt like I just had to share that!

Then, I started getting more and more people asking me how I got started on Pinterest, how I grew my blog and how I was able to make money.

When I realized people really wanted to hear this from me, I decided to rebrand the blog to what it is today!

3. Your VA background- when did you realise being a VA was actually a thing, and when did you become a Pinterest VA?

So that same blogger that I learned all about Pinterest from shared on her blog that she was able to go full-time in her business by managing Pinterest accounts for other bloggers.

I honestly had no clue people actually did this, and I even had my doubts on how much income it could really bring in because it was such a specific service!

I had reservations about it and kept it at the back of my mind – not taking it seriously.

But then she announced that she created a course for learning how to become a Pinterest Manager and that really got me interested and I figured “why not?”.

Pinterest is really my passion and something I enjoy so if I could do that as my job, that would be a dream come true.

After much back and forth (and many pro/con lists later), I decided to enroll.

And after taking the course, I was able to land my first client a few months later and officially went full-time 6 months after taking her course!

4. How do your services affect your blogging income?

Offering services has been a game-changer and has truly been the thing that allowed me to go full-time with my business.

I had been making money from my blog through other monetization methods like ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, etc, but it was a very slow process to make a significant amount at the beginning.

I knew offering services could get me to full-time blogging in a shorter time frame!

Now I always recommend to my readers – if you want to monetize quickly and go full-time with your blog, definitely consider offering services while you continue to grow your blog as well.

5. How do you find your clients?

To be completely honest, I hardly promote my services as much as I should be.

I get most of my clients organically through Google or through word of mouth from my current/past clients!

6. What’s your schedule like as a VA and blogger?

I work 4 days a week and for about 25-30 hours!

I’m super flexible with my schedule though. I try to work when it feels right and I’m inspired and I take a step back when I need to.

I wanted to build a business that allowed me to have more time and freedom for family and my personal life so that’s why I try to keep a light schedule.

7. As a VA but also a blogger publishing content regularly, how do you find time to do it all?! How do you keep the balance?

Love this question!!

Having an editorial calendar is KEY.

I have a spreadsheet with all my pre-planned blog content on it. It’s basically a running list of ideas and whenever I have a new idea, I add it on.

Every month, I look at my editorial calendar and choose what content I want to publish. Then, I go to my paper planner and give them deadlines on my calendar.

I try to write my blog posts ahead of time and schedule them out but that doesn’t always happen. I publish posts once a week but sometimes I catch myself writing them the day of!

My main focus is always on my clients and working on their projects first. I have a lot of systems in place to streamline my Pinterest work and get things done quickly. So once all those tasks are done, I then focus on blog content.

Some weeks I don’t publish anything and that’s okay too. I try not to be too hard on myself about it and just follow my intuition.

8. If you had any advice for yourself back before you started, what would it be?

YES! I wish I had gone into offering services earlier.

Doing so really changed the course of my entire life.

I was working so many dead-end jobs before this that I absolutely hated. I am SO grateful to be able to call this blog my job!

I’d also tell myself to relax and not get so worked up about the little things. I’m more carefree now meanwhile before, I used to hustle so hard and put in so many hours doing the wrong things for little to no return.

I think it’s really important to be productive and focus on tasks that actually move the needle and grow your business!

BEING A PINTEREST VA- FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into what it’s like to be a full time Pinterest manager!

If you did enjoy this post, please share it:

Don’t forget to sign up for my free Pinterest course below:

And if you’re interested in making money blogging:

• Read my income report on how I made $439 blogging here
• Check out the best passive income methods for bloggers

The post What it’s REALLY like being a Pinterest VA? appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

I’m so excited to share this income report with you!

As you’ll know if you read my income reports regularly, since I started sharing my income reports in July 2019 I’d had one $1000 month.

But since then, I’d been earning around $800 a month since.

If you’ve missed my previous blogging income reports, you can check them out below:

• July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• November 2019: How I made $1225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)
• January 2020: How I made $828 blogging whilst working 40 hours a week

Now, it’s my long term goal to consistently earn at least $1000 a month from my blog.

And once I had done it the once, I knew that eventually I’d be able to do it again… It was just a case of when.

Well I’ll pleased to say that this month, I achieved that goal.

I made over $1000 blogging this month!

Read on to find out how…

MY BLOGGING STATS

I always start with my blogging stats to show other bloggers you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money.

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is the main social media platform I use to get traffic.

In February, I reached:

• 8,019 followers (+488)
• 1.9 million monthly viewers (+0.2 million)

I’m super happy with this, as I’ve reached over 8k followers!

And my reach just keeps on climbing.

Plus, if I’m honest, I don’t really give my account as much love as I should (I’m too busy growing other people’s accounts…more on this to come).

So I’m very pleased with this.

MY BLOG VIEWS

My traffic increased massively this month:

I actually had over 20k pageviews!

But if I’m honest, I’m not sure how much of this increase is real traffic.

As I had a tonne of new traffic from referral, but when I looked into it it didn’t seem like it was from a legit website.

However, on the days I got surges in referral traffic, I did see more new subscribers than I usually get in a day.

So I’m presuming some of them must have been real.

And I’m certainly not complaining!

ORGANIC SEARCH TRAFFIC INCREASE

I’m also really happy because not all of this increase was due to referral.

A lot of my traffic increase was thanks to organic search traffic.

I was averaging between 80-100 views a day (from organic search traffic), but then I began to notice one post was picking up on Google.

And this was a post on Valentine’s Day.

It was actually really interesting because I hadn’t even made any recent changes to this post in order for it to be seen as worthy by Google. (In fact I’m sure the last time I had made an update was last year).

But Google still thought it was good, and towards Valentine’s Day my traffic started to increase drastically.

At one point I actually had over 400 sessions in a single day from Google alone!

So it has definitely shown me the potential for organic search traffic, and it’s on my never ending to do list to make Google traffic a thing for my blog.

As I know it will benefit me in the long run.

MY EMAIL STATS

I’m not mad about this, but not thrilled either.

Because It’s pretty great that I’m gaining around 100 subscribers a month (without doing much to get them).

I just think it would be better if I could get more!

So gaining subscribers at a faster rate is definitely on my to do list.

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for February!

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

February 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a closer look at each of my 4 income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Below are all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month:

As ever, it’s nice to have affiliate income, but I don’t really see it as a secure source of my money from blogging right now.

However, I know it has the potential to be a big earner for me (some people earn their whole blogging income from it!).

So I’m not saying I will never focus on affiliate income.

It’s just not my main focus right now.

ADVERTISING INCOME

I love making money from adverts because because as long as people read my blog, I make money.

And it’s good to see this income has stayed consistent:

HOWEVER, I’m frustrated AGAIN that my traffic has increased (by quite a lot this time), and my income has only increased by… $10.

So I’m hoping that I can keep growing my traffic… As I can feel I’m close to getting enough traffic to apply for MediaVine (and hopefully make more money from ads!).

PRODUCT SALES

I’m majorly gutted with this one.

Because a few months ago I was making sales daily with subscribers entering my sales funnel.

But now, it seems to have stopped making me sales.

And I haven’t changed anything!

But:

1. I think this is because I had a viral pin driving a lot of traffic to one post, and then people were entering the sales funnel from there. So there’s a lot less people entering it now (or if they are, it’s not from a place where they’re ready to buy).
2. It’s really good to see I am making full price sales!

I love love love selling my own products.

And I know I will be creating more products in the future.

I’m just really struggling with my time management right now to get something started!

SERVICES INCOME

I’m really happy with this one!

(I’m aware this is more than the total income I listed, but PayPal takes a fee each time so it is less than the total in the images).

As you’ll know if you read my last income report, last month I managed to sign on 3 new clients for my Pinterest management services.

And I’ve loved earning income this way as it feels very secure and I do actually enjoy managing people’s Pinterest accounts.

However, it’s a lot more work than I expected!!

As most of the income I’ve earned before now has been passive.

So creating work for clients each week is a lot more work than I’m used to.

However, I’m happy to work hard for clients right now as it should mean I have a secure source of income in the future.

But now that I have 4 clients, I really don’t have the time to take on any more!

So I’ve raised my rates, and will only be taking clients on that I feel are a perfect fit.

But for now, I am very happy with this income stream.

BLOGGING EXPENSES

I always hate this bit, but here are my monthly expenses:

So these are quite high expenses for a blogger.

And whilst some things I absolutely need, others I pay extra for.

These include:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.

So realistically if you were looking at expenses for a new blogger, whilst I pay almost $85 new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity! And you would only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product).

Plus some payments are annually, not monthly (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year for example).

BLOGGING GOALS

I like sharing my long term blogging goals, so one day I can look back and hopefully see how far I’ve come!

• Have consistent $1k – $2k months. I still can’t believe I’ve had another month earning over $1k! I’m just hoping this can be a long term thing.
• Gain 4 Pinterest clients. In the beginning it was my long term goal originally to gain 4 Pinterest clients, which I’ve now done. And as making money through Pinterest management is one of my favourite ways to make money as it really feels secure, growing my client base would really make sense.
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I’m getting close to this now, especially after having a post gain a lot of organic traffic thanks to seasonality.
• Reach 50k sessions a month. I just really love the idea of making money passively from ads, and this amount would mean a good chunk of passive income.
• Become THE website for blogging ebooks, courses and resources. I’m already making plans for this, and it’s really exciting!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you enjoyed my February blogging income report!

As they do take me a while to write, so I hope they are proving useful for those who read them.

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

FEBRUARY BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post FEBRUARY INCOME REPORT: How I made $1047 blogging (whilst working full-time) appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

What a great start to the year!

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I’ve been sharing blogging income reports since July 2019.

But I actually started this blog in January of 2018 (so my blog is now 2 years old. Happy blog-birthday to me!).

And when I started making money from it about a year and a half in, I was over the moon and wanted to track my income as my blog grew.

Plus, I know as someone who has blogged for more than 2 years (I had another blog for a while before this one) without making a penny that making money blogging is tough.

But now this is my 7 month consistently making money with my blog.

So I hope that by sharing my blogging income, it shows other aspiring bloggers that making money blogging can be done!

PREVIOUS BLOGGING INCOME REPORTS

If you missed my previous income reports, you can find them below:

• July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• November 2019: How I made $1225 whilst working full-time
• December 2019: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time)

BLOGGING IN JANUARY

So after I made over $1000 in November but just over $800 in December, I was really hoping for a strong start to the year.

And obviously, I’m a lil’ gutted I didn’t make over $1000 blogging this month.

Because making over $1000 a month is a long term goal of mine, as I really want my blog to be a secure source of income so I can work wherever I want to.

BUT if I try to think positively, whilst I’m not hitting that yet I’m still getting months of consistently earning over $800.

And this is only working part-time!

Plus, I have some really exciting news for you that’s going to massively impact my blogging income .

So read on to find out!

MY BLOGGING STATS

Before I start my income report, I always share my blogging stats.

And this is so other bloggers can see you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money.

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is the main social media platform I use to get traffic.

In January, I reached:

• 7,531 followers (+434)
• 1.7 million monthly viewers (+0.2 million)

I’m pretty happy with this, as I haven’t really been focusing on my own Pinterest account very much.

But I’ve still managed to gain over 400 followers…

…Plus my reach has increased by 0.2 million.

Without me putting in much effort!

So I am very happy, but as I say every month- I need to focus on my own account more.

Because I know there is room to grow here.

MY BLOG VIEWS

A change of tune here- because my traffic actually increased!

I’m really pleased because it’s been one of my long term goals to gradually grow my blog traffic.

And this month you can see nearly all of the different channels I use to get blog readers has increased (except email… But even that is only down slightly).

MORE TRAFFIC THROUGH SEO

I’m especially happy because you can see my blog traffic from Google has almost doubled in the last 30 days.

And I have been putting effort into this (I switched blog hosting to a more expensive but faster one).

But one of the reasons my organic search traffic has increased is because I have been making sure my blog posts are SEO friendly.

So how have I done this?

Now, I was nowhere near as confident with SEO as I am with Pinterest.

So I knew I needed help.

But, SEO training online is usually hella expensive.

And that’s because SEO traffic is worth the investment- once you put the work in you can get traffic organically and consistently from Google, without even trying (because people are searching for answers on Google!).

So the quality of the traffic you get afterwards makes the initial amount you spend worth it.

Now, I was actually saving up for a course on SEO thats over $200.

But whilst I was starting to get into learning more about SEO, I came across Debbie from TheFlooringGirl.com.

Debbie is in one of the same blogging Facebook groups as me, and she really knows her SEO stuff- she gets a whopping 100,000 sessions a month from Google alone!

And when I saw Debbie had an ebook that teaches you how to write SEO friendly posts and it was less than $40?

I bought it straight away!

Because Debbie is an SEO pro, and I knew that her tips would be worth the investment (which is a very small amount compared to other SEO training)

THE SEO EBOOK THAT DOUBLED MY ORGANIC TRAFFIC IN 30 DAYS

The ebook I bought is called Easy On Page SEO.

And whilst I will say it doesn’t teach you everything you need to know about SEO (Debbie has more books that cover other SEO topics like backlinks), I was ready to buy it because it specifically teaches you how to format your blog posts so Google likes them and shows them.

I specifically wanted a book to teach me exactly that because I did NOT want to write another blog post until I knew I was writing them correctly.

Because I felt silly writing blog posts knowing they weren’t the best they could be for Google to take them seriously and show them for searches.

So I went ahead and bought her ebook.

And now I know each blog post I write is good for Google, and I can get more traffic in the long run because of it.

Plus, I think the results speak for themselves- my sessions from Google have almost doubled in a single month since I’ve started implementing her tips.

I’ve already made back the money I spent from ads on my blog, thanks to the organic search traffic I am getting since reading her ebook.

And I am closer to my long term goal of getting over 10k sessions a month from Google.

So for me, it was totally worth the investment.

And I do really recommend her ebook if you are a blogger.

Because SEO is seriously worth putting your effort into as it means long term consistent traffic.

So if you’re writing blog posts but know you need to learn how to make them SEO friendly, please check out her ebook below.

It’s inexpensive and you will learn a lot from it!

>> CHECK OUT EASY ON PAGE SEO HERE

MY EMAIL STATS

This has been a much better month for me in terms of subscribers:

I gained 119 subscribers in total (including new subscribers and unsubs).

And whilst that does not sound like much, I don’t really do much to gain these subscribers.

It’s all automatic.

So to gain 119 subscribers in a single month, by the end of the year my email list will have grown by 1,400 subscribers.

And that’s without much work- hopefully if I work on my strategy I will gain a lot more than this!

So not amazing, but a definite improvement from December for sure.

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for January!

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

January 2020 Blogging Income report

Here’s a closer look at each of my 4 income streams:

AFFILIATE MARKETING

So check out all the screenshots of my affiliate earnings for the month below…

You can see I’ve made just over $250 from affiliate income this month, which I am pretty happy with.

BUT, as I say every month, I have so much room to grow here.

Because I have loads of blog posts where I just haven’t utilised affiliate links for the blogging products I love as much as I should.

And I have emails that generate affiliate sales, but these need to be automated as soon as I can to make sure my affiliate income is more consistent.

So I’m thankful for the extra $250, but it’s still a long term goal to up my affiliate marketing game!

ADVERTISING INCOME

You guys know how much I love my income from adverts on my blog, because it’s completely passive.

Meaning as long as people read my blog, I make money.

I’m really pleased to have made $130 without doing anything.

HOWEVER, I am a bit annoyed that despite gaining a lot more pageviews for my blog than last month, but my income is still practically the same.

And I know that the more traffic I get, the more money I can make (especially as I can move to a better premium ad network that pays more money!).

So a sort of win (because any money made without trying is a win), but room to grow here too.

PRODUCT SALES

Now I’m a little disappointed with this one.

Because I earned less than half the income I did from product sales last month (where I made $220).

But thinking positively- in December I held a lot of sales and promoted my products to my email list much more.

And this month I literally said nothing about my products at all.

So to have made over $100 without really promoting any of my stuff is a definite win!

But again, there is definite room to grow here too.

SERVICES INCOME

Now this is where I am absolutely chuffed with my blogging income from this month, and to be honest I am seriously still in a slight state of disbelief.

Because as you might already know, I’ve been a Pinterest manager for a few months now.

As I love getting results for my own blog using Pinterest (AKA consistent traffic, sales, etc), and I wanted to help other bloggers and small business owners get the same results as I have.

So I decided to become a Pinterest manager…. And after struggling for a few months, I finally landed my first client in October 2019.

Now, it was my long term goal for throughout 2020 to get to around 4 clients. As my client income is one of my favourite ways to make money, as it feels very secure and I am confident in what I’m doing (plus I love helping people).

But I knew how difficult it really was to get clients, as it had taken me longer than I’d expected to get my first one.

And even though I felt a lot more confident branching out and finding more people who might needed some Pinterest magic from me (as I’d gotten my first client some really good results!), I was still aware of how long it might take me to reach that goal I’d set myself of 4 clients.

So, I would have called you a liar if you had told me in December how many clients I would gain in the next 30 days.

Because believe it or not, by the end of January I had gained not 1 client…

…Not 2…

But 3 clients. In one single month.

So I am now up to my goal of 4 clients. And it’s only January!!

This is absolutely insane, and I am beyond thrilled.

Because these new clients will mean that I will consistently be bringing over $600 a month in from my blog.

And considering how long it took me to just get 1 client, to have secured three this month is amazing.

I am honestly so happy I could cry!

So whilst I have room to grow in some areas, I am beyond thrilled with this income stream.

BUT, I am now not looking to take on any more clients.

Because I want to focus on these clients and get them the results I know I can deliver.

And I don’t want to take on anymore whilst I’m still working 40 hours a week!

So I’ve increased my rates, and I’m not actively looking for any clients right now (although if someone shows interest I will be open to taking them on, depending on their situation!).

But to summarise, services has been my top income win for the month!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: EXPENSES

I always hate this bit, but here are my monthly expenses:

So these are quite high expenses for a blogger.

And whilst some things I absolutely need, others I pay extra for.

These include:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.

So realistically if you were looking at expenses for a new blogger, whilst I pay almost $85 new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity! And you would only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product).

Plus some payments are annually, not monthly (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year for example).

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT WORKED

There were some definite wins for me this month! Which include:

1. Earning from different affiliate programmes: It feels good to diversify where I get my income from.
2. Gaining new clients: This is a massive win that I am absolutely over the moon about!
3. Growing my blog: It’s nice to see my traffic increase (especially from SEO, as this is a long term goal of mine).

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Of course, some things didn’t work:

1. Engaging my audience: this month I sent quite a few emails, but not as many as I had planned.
2. Making more money blogging: Obviously I’m thrilled to be making at least $600 from services going forward, but I want consistent $1k months!
3. Product sales: I suppose this could be a win when you consider I made $100+ from sales passively, but I want to make more sales each month.

BLOGGING GOALS

I like sharing my long term blogging goals, so one day I can look back and hopefully see how far I’ve come!

• Have consistent $1k – $2k months. I still can’t believe I’ve had a month earning over $1k, and over $800 the next two months. But eventually I want months consistently earning that as a minimum amount.
• Gain 4 MORE Pinterest clients. It was my long term goal originally to gain 4 Pinterest clients, which I’ve now done! And as making money through Pinterest management is one of my favourite ways to make money, growing my client base would really make sense.
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I’m getting close to this now that I’ve started taking it seriously, but I have a long way to go.
• Reach 50k sessions a month. I just really love the idea of making money passively from ads!
• Become THE website for blogging ebooks, courses and resources. I really want to be the best place for aspiring bloggers to visit and learn how to build their blogs!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you enjoyed my January blogging income report!

As they do take me a will to write, so I hope they are proving useful for those who read them.

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

JANUARY BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2020

The post JANUARY INCOME REPORT: How I made $828 blogging (whilst working full-time) appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT DECEMBER

First of all, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

You might already know by now that I started sharing income reports in July.

I’d been blogging for almost a year and a half, and this summer when I started to earn money from my blog I decided:

1. I wanted to track my progress.
2. I wanted to show other aspiring bloggers where my blogging income comes from, to show them making money blogging CAN be done.

So I started sharing income reports.

If you missed the previous ones, you can find them below:

• July 2019: How I made $439 blogging
• August 2019: How I made $328 blogging
• September 2019: How I made $512 blogging
• October 2019: How I made $559 blogging part-time
• November 2019: How I made $1225 whilst working full-time

EARNING OVER $1000 BLOGGING IN 1 MONTH

So you’ll see I made over $1000 blogging in November (whilst working 40 hours a week!).

Which I was absolutely thrilled with.

Making over $1k in a single month from my blog has been a long term goal of mine, and one I didn’t think I’d achieve until 2020.

So to earn that much in November was amazing, as I reached a long term goal of mine.

HOWEVER, I was pretty certain this was because of Black Friday and the various sales that were on.

And I had a gut feeling I wasn’t going to be able to make over $1000 in December blogging.

BLOGGING IN DECEMBER

…Well my gut wasn’t wrong- I did not make over $1k from my blog in December.

BUT, this is not to say I am disheartened.

Because it was Christmas (obviously!).

And this means 2 things:

1. I knew that most people we’re going to be busy getting festive and spending their time with family and friends.
2. I was also going to be busy getting festive. I had 3 Christmas parties with work alone! And I had loads of family to visit.

So I knew I wasn’t going to be able to spend much time on my blog, and I also knew that other people weren’t going to be spending much time on my blog either.

But despite this, I still managed to make over $800 blogging in December.

So here it is; my blogging income report.

MY BLOGGING STATS

Before I start my income report, I always cover my current blogging stats for other bloggers to see that you don’t need a massive following or loads of page views to make money!

PINTEREST STATS

My Pinterest account is the only social media account I focus on currently.

In December, I reached:

• 7,063 (+423)
• 1.5 million monthly viewers (-0.1 million)

(I’m aware it says I’ve only gained 415 followers this month, but I went off the number of Pinterest followers I had reached in my November income report and then looked at the increase between my follower count by the end of this month!).

My follower growth is slightly less than last month, and my reach is slowly decreasing (I previously had a reach of 1.8 million monthly viewers).

But positive thinking: I’ve reached 7k followers!

Plus I still have a reach of over 1 million, which is pretty cool.

I just know I’ve been neglecting my own Pinterest account now that I’m a Pinterest manager.

Well the good news is I’m still gaining positive results for my Pinterest client and growing their account, which I think is more important than my own account!

But I definitely need to focus on my own account a bit.

Perhaps I need to treat myself as a client, so I can prioritise time for my own Pinterest account…

But either way, my account is definitely not doing bad in my eyes!

MY BLOG VIEWS

I feel like a broken record, because every month I say my traffic has dipped and I want to do something about it:

But I’m cutting myself some slack because:

1. It’s been Christmas. My blog traffic dropped massively over the week of Christmas (then picked back up a few days later). Which is understandable as everyone is busy, and my blog doesn’t really cater to festive interests.
2. I’m still making money even with low traffic, so page views aren’t the deciding factor in how much money you make.
3. I obviously want to grow my blog, but my priorities have shifted and I’d rather better monetise the visitors I currently have than spend all my effort into growing my blog! As sure, I can make more money from ads with higher page views, but I’d probably make even more if I were to focus that energy into making a new course or ebook for example (more on this to come!).

So there are lots of reasons for me not to stress too much over this…

…But I do still have the long term goal to grow my blog traffic as much as possible, so I can make more passive income from ads!

And I know I need to work really hard in the long term for this.

MY EMAIL STATS

Straight up- not a great month for me in terms of email.

I gained a lot less subscribers than normal (I normally get around 140 including unsubs).

And this is because my most popular blog post that gains me the most signups stopped getting as much traffic from Pinterest.

Now, this is a massive worry for me because when people subscribe to my blog is also when a lot of them purchase my Viral Pin Guide.

And I noticed straight away when that pin stopped getting as much click throughs from Pinterest, I stopped getting as many email signups (and then made fewer sales of my guide).

BUT this doesn’t necessarily mean my funnel is broken. As when people do actually go through it, I do make some sales.

I just know I need to find a better way to get people to my blog and through my sales funnel other than just a viral pin.

Thankfully this seemed to be a seasonal dip, and after Christmas I had days where 10 people a day where subscribing to my blog.

I just know I need to be putting more effort into gaining subscribers (especially diversify how I am gaining them).

I’m considering paid adverts even… But that will be far in my blogging future I think!

MY BLOGGING INCOME

So here it is: a breakdown of my blogging income for December!

(Side note: this is income before expenses. Some affiliate products have a 30-day refund policy, and this is income earned for the month, not necessarily paid out).

December 2019 Blogging Income report

So usually, I go into detail about each specific form of income.

But this month I thought I’d do it a little differently.

Rather than split out my affiliate programmes and comment on them each, I thought I’d group them together and then just comment on the most important things from each of my 4 income streams.

AFFILIATE MARKETING

I made almost $300 from affiliate marketing in December, which isn’t as much as November (when I made over $500!).

But it’s still a pretty good amount.

Whilst I’m happy affiliate marketing is an income stream for me, I still feel I am leaving money on the table with this (for example I only made 2 affiliate sales for blog hosting this month, but I recently surveyed my readers and LOADS of them don’t have a self hosted blog!).

So there is definitely room for me to grow my income through affiliate marketing.

I just don’t like using it as my main form of income, as I find it very uncertain.

(Example- I made almost $70 from the BHW affiliate programme this month, but some months I have only made $10 whereas in July I made over $140 from that affiliate programme alone)!

ADVERTISING INCOME

I love making money from ads, as it’s seriously passive (I literally have to do nothing for it. As long as people read my blog, I make money).

And I think an extra $100+ a month isn’t bad at all.

However, I want to massively increase my blog traffic in the long run so that:

1. I can apply to the premium ad network MediaVine, which is one of the best for bloggers (and requires 25k sessions a month to get in).
2. I can make more money from ads alone ($500+ per month ideally), as this will massively increase my blogging income!

PRODUCT SALES

This is one of my favourite ways to make money.

As it makes me feel more in control of my earnings, compared to when I make money with affiliate marketing.

(Plus it makes me happy to know my products are helping other bloggers!)

However you’ll notice there was a big period of time when I made no sales.

And this was because:

1. As I previously mentioned, less people were going through my sales funnel from Pinterest when they subscribed to my email list, so less people were landing on the discount sales page to purchase my guide.
2. It was Christmas so less people wanted to buy blog related stuff I suppose!

Thankfully you can see my sales pick back up after Christmas.

But it’s woken me up a bit that I can’t just rely on one method to get people into my sales funnel.

So I definitely need to work on this.

SERVICES INCOME

This is my third month providing Pinterest management for a client, and I’m absolutely loving it.

Each month I’ve managed to grow their reach and increase their engagement, which they are thrilled at.

And it’s made me super ready to take on more clients!

It’s also my other favourite way to make money, as I feel it’s more definite and secure than my other forms of income (once they’ve paid the invoice, the money is in my account).

So I want to get more clients ASAP as I know I can deliver them results, and so I have definite amounts of money coming in (I love my current client, but if they dump me for whatever reason I’d have no definite income each month!).

So hopefully in 2020 I will be gaining more clients, which I’m super excited for!

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: EXPENSES

I always hate this bit, but here are my monthly expenses:

So these are quite high expenses for a blogger.

And whilst some things I absolutely need, others I pay extra for.

These include:

• BLOG HOSTING: I couldn’t run my blog without this, but I recently paid for more expensive hosting to make my blog load faster. Blog hosting is definitely an essential expense, but you can start a blog for under $4 a month by following my start a blog guide here.
• TAILWIND: I love Tailwind so much that I bought a plan with more features, which has helped to increase my reach. But you don’t need to spend almost $20 a month on it- you can schedule 100 pins for free.
• SENDOWL: This is the platform I use to sell my guide on. I pay $15 a month to have the option to add more products and sign up affiliates, but the basic plan allows you to sell 10 digital products for just $9 a month.
• MAILERLITE: Email marketing has become essential for me, and I wouldn’t be able to make money blogging without it. I recommend Mailerlite because you can add images to your email. Whilst I pay for mine, it’s actually free for up to 1000 subscribers. Plus you can get a $20 referral fee when you sign up here.

So realistically if you were looking at expenses for a new blogger, whilst I pay almost $85 new bloggers would spend less than $20 a month (as Tailwind isn’t even a necessity! And you would only need SendOwl if you wanted to sell a digital product).

Plus some payments are annually, not monthly (I pay for Tailwind up front for the year for example).

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT WORKED

So this month, these are the things that worked for me blogging:

1. Working smarter not harder and prioritising tasks that will make me money blogging without burning myself out (the same as last month, it’s pretty awesome I can make money whilst working full-time!).
2. Engaging my audience: this month I sent a big survey to my readers and a lot of them filled it out, so now I have a good idea of what I need to give to them to help them with their blogs and for me to start making more income.
3. Understanding and the steps I need to make more money blogging. That might sound a bit weird, but now I am blogging as a hobby (a profitable one at that!) and because I’ve been doing it for a while, I can step back with hindsight and see what actions I need to take in order to continue to grow.
4. Learning what methods of making money blogging I enjoy/ make me feel secure. Again slightly different to what I normally put, but now I’ve been making money blogging for 6 months I’m starting to lean what methods I enjoy and make my income feel secure. And hopefully in 2020 I can start making more money through the methods I enjoy the most!

BLOGGING REVIEW: WHAT DIDN’T WORK

• Growing my blog. Getting more traffic and gaining subscribers etc has been a massive fail for me this month.
• Making more money blogging. Obviously I’m thrilled to be making this much money whilst working, but it’s kind of gutting to have a $1k month then go back to earning under $1k. But it’s a reality of earning online- the income isn’t consistent or guaranteed, and aspiring bloggers need to know!

BLOGGING GOALS

Now I normally write down monthly blogging goals.

But because I don’t have much time to work on my blog, I haven’t been very ambitious with my goals. Plus I wasn’t achieving even the easy goals I was setting myself sometimes, and it was getting me down.

So rather than share monthly blogging goals, I thought I’d just share my long term blogging goals!

• Have consistent $1k – $2k months. I still can’t believe I’ve had a month earning over $1k! But now in 2020 I want months consistently earning that as a minimum amount.
• Gain 4 (or more) Pinterest clients. Making money through Pinterest management is one of my favourite ways to make money, as I love growing Pinterest accounts for other bloggers and I feel this income stream is the most secure. So getting this many clients would make me feel my blogging income is really legit!
• Gain 10k sessions from SEO. I want to be getting loads of organic search traffic, as I rely on Pinterest for my blog traffic too much currently. I’m saving up for an SEO course that loads of bloggers love, so hopefully I will be able to achieve this!
• Reach 50k sessions a month. Mediavine (a premium ad network) requires you to have 25k sessions per month before you join, so getting this amount consistently long term will mean decent money from ads as well as the rest of my blogging income. Plus I can then give other blogger tips on how they can do it too.
• Become THE website for blogging ebooks, courses and resources. It took me ages to create my first ebook, but I’m thrilled to say I am now starting to work on creating my next blogging resource!

This is massive for me, as I know I should have done this a while ago…

It just took me so. long. to make my first ebook, that I’ve been having to psyche myself up to go through it again.

And I was really nervous when I launched my first ebook (like CRAZY nervous- so much so that I didn’t mention it to anyone for months, ha!).

So it took a lot of courage for me to do it.

But now:

• I’ve sold over 100 copies of The Viral Pin Guide
• I’ve had loads of positive feedback on it, and people who have been through it have gotten results
• Plus I’ve made over $1k from sales of that guide alone!

All from an ebook I was too scared to launch in the beginning.

But now I know it’s time for me to make a second resource in order for my blog to progress (readers are actually asking me for it!).

And now I’ve done it once before, I’m kinda excited to do it again

BLOGGING INCOME REPORT: FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you enjoyed my December blogging income report!

I’m really happy to have earned this much, again without burning myself out around working and over the Christmas period.

And if you’re an aspiring blogger, you should now realise that whilst making money blogging is awesome and I do love it, it’s not a guaranteed stable income like a normal 9-5 is.

But if anything, that makes me want to work harder and earn more! And hopefully you’re the same.

I’m so excited to work hard in 2020 and see where me and my blog go!

EXTRA BLOGGING HELP

Remember if you need more help making money with your blog:

• You can sign up for my free course Easy Passive Income to learn how to make money with your blog
• Check out Easy Pinterest with Emily to start getting serious blog traffic using Pinterest
• And join the Easy Blogging Facebook group to get even more support!

RELATED MAKING MONEY BLOGGING ARTICLES

• How these bloggers make a full time income blogging
• Making money in your sleep? Affiliate marketing for beginners
• How to make $500+ a month with Amazon affiliates

DECEMBER BLOGGING INCOME REPORT 2019

The post DECEMBER INCOME REPORT: How I made $816 blogging (whilst working full-time) appeared first on Easy Blog Emily.